Genspect Article on separation from GC ideology and social conservative ideology

It seems to be claiming that women who are gender critical don’t agree with protecting religious freedom. As there’s no overlap in that segment with the GC circle.

That would be right. There’s nothing about gender critical thought that includes protecting religious freedom. GC people may also support religious freedom, but you can be consistently and fully GC and not support it.

I think you can’t ’protect religious freedom’ whilst protecting free speech and critiquing social norms. It’s disingenuous.

Is it that you protect the ‘freedom’ for people to subject their daughters to FGM, openly incite violence towards homosexuals, etc, as part of their religious expression, or do you defend the social norms and customs of the UK of tolerance, protecting women and girls from violence, etc?

Personally, I would tick every intersecting statement, - all of them, because I am constantly weighing up and considering and avoiding lazy thinking.

I suppose though, the most important admission, is that they believe philosophical liberals don’t agree with protecting women and children from men, according to the Venn diagram.

Is this rebranding those who wish to ‘liberalise’ harmful male behaviours which overwhelmingly victimise women and children (eg - the enablers/normalisers of pedophiles and other sex criminals), as ‘philosophical liberals’?

“I think this isn't quite right as I do critique social norms but am tending to come down on the side that preserving them, or them having social utility for women, so am probably socially conservative.”

I agree that their Venn diagram isn’t quite right.

I come down on the side of opposing things that make women’s lives worse.

Genspect aren’t women’s rights campaigners (or that’s what I’ve read on here) so they’ve got their own priorities.

“I do think it's a useful attempt to separate some of differences that are becoming visible though. and which have caused Genspect difficulty.”

I think you’ve hit the nail on the head there. They seem to be attempting a sort of “we aren’t radical feminists and we aren’t right wing, we’re philosophers” pitch. So they’re not too concerned about the accuracy of the details as long as their broadbrush “we’re not on any side” message gets across.

Yes, sorry Malaga, as your post said “circle”, I looked at the red circle initially and didn’t spot the overlap segment straight away. I was too late to correct my post.

Thanks for posting this, it’s useful to see how different groups frame and present these issues.

The nuances around social norms are interesting to explore.

Looking again at that Venn diagram, I’d say it’s biased in its presentation.

It seems to be claiming that women who are gender critical don’t agree with protecting religious freedom. As there’s no overlap in that segment with the GC circle.

Also, my apologies for my previous reply - I’ve now spotted that the overlap part of the diagram describes both those with GC beliefs and the philosophical liberals as critiquing social norms. I guess that genspect must see “harmful gender roles” as a “social norm”.

Edited to add: Interesting that Genspect doesn’t specify “harmful social norms” in that overlap segment. I guess if they think erotic cross dressing in public is perfectly fine, then their objection to social norms isn’t just limited to harmful norms. Whereas the focus of those with GC beliefs would be on critiquing the harmful norms.

“where I'm obviously more in the socially conservative circle wanting to protect social norms and other GC feminists here being in the critique social norms circle”

You’ve misread the caption.

It doesn’t say “critique social norms” it says protect from “harmful gender roles”.

Men staying out of women’s changing rooms is a social norm. Women who are gender critical support that particular social norm. They also support social norms which protect children.

The difference from some/ many social conservatives is that women who are gender critical don’t believe that supporting those safeguarding social norms means there is a price which must be paid by women, in the form of having negative and restrictive stereotypes forced on them.